Former professional baseball player-turned urban evangelist. Follow this daily blog that chronicles the life and ministry of revivalist preacher William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (1862-1935)
A person who witnessed Billy preaching at Princeton, Illinois, said this of the Evangelist’s preaching:
“When it comes to preaching Billy is a storm, a whirlwind, a cyclone, hurricane, a tornado, a-well, everything indicative of power. He preaches like his life depended upon it. He preaches like he had it to do.” Adding, “As long as Rev. William A. Sunday stays on track and labors to call men back to the old path – the gospel path – he should be allowed to work without opposition from Christian people, even if his methods are sensational and unique and his language at times is shocking.”
Bureau County Tribune (Princeton, Illinois) · Fri, Mar 9, 1906 · Page 3.
Springfield, Illinois February 26 – April 11, 1909
In the spring of 1909, something happened in Springfield that people would talk about for decades.
Not a political convention. Not a legislative battle. A revival.
For forty-five days, the capital city of Illinois — population 51,678 — was overtaken by a wooden tabernacle, a former professional baseball player turned evangelist, and what many believed was a visitation of God.
By the time it ended, nearly 5,000 people had walked the sawdust trail.
And Springfield would never quite be the same.
The Numbers — and the Scale
The statistics alone are staggering.
4,729 reported conversions
774 converts on the final day alone — the largest single-day total of Sunday’s career to that point
607,000 total attendance over the course of the campaign
35,000+ at the final Sunday service
$20,218 in total contributions
$10,734 to Sunday
$9,483 to campaign expenses
To put this in perspective: Springfield’s population was just over 51,000. Attendance over the campaign equaled more than twelve times the city’s population.
One hundred thousand people attended special weekday meetings. 35,800 participated in cottage prayer meetings.
This was not a tent revival on the fringe of town.
This was the town.
Even Governor Charles Deneen and members of his family were reported among the converts on the closing day, joining First Methodist Episcopal Church . When the governor walks the aisle, you know something seismic is happening.
And yet, remarkably, Billy Sunday himself was reportedly disappointed with the conversion numbers. He believed “personal work was not begun early enough.”
That was Sunday. Five thousand souls, and he still thought the church could have done more.
The Night Billy Was Horsewhipped
The campaign did not begin quietly.
On opening night, in front of 8,000 people, Sunday was assaulted.
A man named Sherman Potts rushed forward with a buggy whip and struck Sunday multiple times. The audience teetered toward panic. Women wept. Children screamed. Sunday leapt from the platform and knocked his assailant down. They rolled in the aisle before ushers and police subdued the attacker.
The papers reported that Potts had previously been declared insane and had been confined at Jacksonville. He claimed he acted in defense of women’s virtue, alleging that Sunday had criticized them.
What could have ended the revival instead amplified it.
Fred Fischer directed the choir to sing, calming the crowd. The meeting continued.
Springfield had just witnessed the kind of drama that headlines love — and revivals sometimes ride.
The “Judgment” Sermon and the Men
On one Sunday afternoon, 8,000 men packed the tabernacle to hear Sunday preach what was described as his “judgment” sermon.
Three hundred men responded.
Sunday’s masculine appeal — direct, confrontational, athletic — was reshaping revival culture. This was not sentimental religion. It was muscular, public, civic.
He preached like a ballplayer sliding into home — coat off, body leaning, words cutting.
And men came.
Mother’s Day: 9,000 White Handkerchiefs
One of the most remarkable moments came on Mother’s Day.
Sunday requested that every person wear a white flower or ribbon in honor of mother. If your mother was alive, do her an act of kindness. Write her. Telegraph her. Give her a gift. If she was gone, do something kind for someone else’s mother.
He invited businessmen to close their stores from 2–4 p.m. and pledged that an offering would go to the Woman’s Club for distribution to city charities.
Then it happened.
Nine thousand white handkerchiefs rose in the air in honor of mothers.
In an era before official federal recognition of Mother’s Day, Springfield became a tableau of white cloth and public gratitude.
It was revival fused with civic virtue. Sunday understood symbolism.
Inclusion: Deaf Mutes and Interpreted Sermons
Another remarkable feature of the campaign was the regular attendance of a large group of deaf men from Jacksonville.
Professor Frank Reed, Jr., of the State School interpreted Sunday’s sermons. Reports indicate that between thirty and forty deaf attendees were converted during the Springfield meetings .
When the offering was taken, the deaf men gave ten dollars — a meaningful sum in 1909. Sunday seized the moment: If men who could not hear a word of what I say were contributing to this extent, what ought some of you fellows down there do who hear it all?
Photographs from the campaign show massive ranks of ushers — disciplined, suited, organized.
Springfield was not spontaneous chaos. It was structured revival.
This was the era when Sunday’s campaigns became logistical marvels:
Massive wooden tabernacle
Coordinated prayer meetings
Choirs
Personal workers
Cottage gatherings
Financial accountability
The revival was both spiritual movement and operational achievement.
Sunday was not merely a preacher. He was building a machine.
“A Good and Great Man”
After the campaign, C. C. Sinclair, pastor of Stewart Street Christian Church, offered this assessment:
“A good and great man, mighty in word and in deed; a prophet, and more than a prophet… The church has been purged and strengthened, and Springfield is being turned to God. It is such a revival of religion as comes to a community but once in a generation.”
That language is not casual.
Once in a generation.
Springfield’s churches reported strengthening and purging — language that suggests repentance within the church as much as conversion outside it.
Revival, for Sunday, was not merely altar calls. It was institutional recalibration.
Why Springfield Mattered
Springfield 1909 was a hinge moment.
It proved Sunday could sustain massive attendance over weeks.
It demonstrated his appeal to political and civic leadership.
It showed that controversy could fuel momentum.
It fused patriotic symbolism, moral reform, and evangelical urgency.
It revealed a revival model scalable to larger cities.
1909 postcard of Springfield, Illinois. Color-corrected. Author’s collection.
In many ways, Springfield was the rehearsal for the metropolitan campaigns to come.
And for a city of 51,000 to generate 607,000 in cumulative attendance? That’s not ordinary religious enthusiasm.
That’s a cultural event.
The Artifact That Survived
I own a 60-page souvenir booklet titled Rev. W. A. Sunday Meetings at Springfield, Illinois (c. 1909). When it arrived in November 2025, the bottom left corner throughout the entire booklet had been ripped away and was missing from the package .
It’s fragile. Imperfect. Scarred.
But so is revival history.
What Springfield experienced in 1909 was messy, dramatic, organized, emotional, public, controversial, generous, patriotic, and deeply evangelical.
It was America before the Great War.
It was Protestant civic religion at full throttle.
It was Billy Sunday in ascent.
And for forty-five days, Springfield stood still — while thousands walked forward.
He prays as though God Almighty were standing right before him.
He prays for everybody.
He prays with the same earnestness and energy that marks his preaching. He prays with the zeal and vim that starred him in baseball.
He expects his prayers to land.
He prays for you and me, for the plumber and the telephone girl, for the banker and the street cleaner, for the washwoman and the debutante.
There’s nothing perfunctory in Sunday’s praying.
Sunday’s prayer is not what he says many a prayer is—“Just a funny noise.” Sunday has something to ask for and he asks for it.
He prays for the salvation of souls, for the success of his meetings, for men to “hit the trail for Jesus Christ.”
Billy Sunday at prayer is the picture of a lawyer pleading to a court. Sunday is the attorney at the bar. Those he prays for are his clients. God Almighty is the supreme judge. God is on the bench hearing the argument.
Sunday states his case. He tells the “judge” what he wants; he gives his reasons; he makes his argument; he pleads:
“For Christ’s sake, God, grant what I ask.”
There’s punch in Sunday’s praying. His prayers distinguish him.
Cited from: The Omaha Daily News. September 19, 1915: 10.
Another popular sermon for Billy Sunday during the 1915-1916 campaigns was the Secret of Failure.
In “Secret of Failure,” Billy Sunday argues that failure in life is not accidental but rooted in disobedience to known truth. Using Jeremiah 5:5, he contends that God’s blessings are available, but people forfeit them by breaking His laws. The central issue is not ignorance but willful rebellion—people know what is right yet refuse to do it. Sunday emphasizes that sin is often subtle and socially acceptable, not just gross immorality, and that even church members can live in quiet compromise. He warns that partial obedience, moral neglect, and conformity to the world lead to spiritual defeat. External religion—church attendance, respectability, or profession of faith—cannot substitute for genuine obedience and transformation. True success, he insists, comes from aligning one’s life with God’s revealed will. The sermon builds toward a direct appeal: stop excusing sin, confess it honestly, and live out what you already know to be true, or failure—spiritual and moral—is inevitable.
Quotes from the sermon
“Your failure isn’t because you don’t know better—it’s because you won’t do better.”
“God tells you what to do, and you nod your head—but you never move your feet.”
“Some men are too good to be counted among the wicked—and too bad to be counted among the saved.”
“A half-obedient man is a whole failure.”
“You can sit in church and hear the truth every week—and still go to hell with a Bible in your lap.”
Page 2 of The Britt News, published in Britt, Iowa on Thursday, March 4th, 1909 Horsewhipped by Religious Zealot at Springfield.
Rev W. A. Sunday, better known as “Billy” Sunday, a former baseball player, who is now an evangelist, was horsewhipped Friday night by a religious fanatic at the Sunday tabernacle in Springfield, Ill., where, in the presence of 8,000 persons he was conducting the opening meeting of a religious revival.
The evangelist had just made his opening remarks and was leaning against the pulpit while a hymn was sung by Fischer and Butler, his choral leaders, when a powerful man who says his name is Sherman Potts ran forward with a buggy whip and struck Sunday several terrific blows.
Sunday leaped from the platform and dashed at his assailant, whom he knocked down. The audience was on the verge of a panic, with women weeping and children screaming while Potts and Sunday rolled and tumbled in the aisle.
Mr Fischer directed the choir and the audience to sing, and in a few moments the entire audience was calmed Several men seized Potts and held him until policemen came and took him to jail.
Mr Sunday suffered several painful bruises from the whip The prisoner said his home was near Lexington, Ill According to his statements at the jail he was once declared insane and committed to the Jacksonville asylum, whence after a brief confinement he was released.
He made the attack he said, in defense of the virtue of women which he declared had been criticized by the evangelist The police say that Potts is a religious fanatic.
Page 2 of The Britt News, published in Britt, Iowa on Thursday, March 4th, 1909.
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 